Merciful, Kind, Killer
by Kashimalin
Summary: It all depends on your perspective, doesn't it?


I take no credit for the actual idea of this fic - I was heavily inspired by creamycomet on AO3/Tumblr, and went along with it!

* * *

It began when his classmates screamed for help. Shrill cries punctured the cool air of the classroom, and students clamored into the corner to see what the commotion was. Already, this lunch break was ending on a more eventful note than it had all year – and for once, Mikohara Gaku was interested in his classmates.

They were gathered by the window, elbowing each other and making faces. As he started walking towards them, he caught snippets of their stage whispers and high-pitched squeals, daring their friends or enemies into doing something inevitably stupid.

" _You_ kill it!" "No, you should!" "Get away, get away!"

Gaku rolled his eyes as he noted the usual set-up. The boys were turning it into a test of courage while staying rooted to their spots, and the girls were only discussing amongst themselves.

However, when he finally pushed through the circle of students, he found the source of their fears vastly underwhelming.

A small spider was frozen on the floor. It didn't twitch a single limb, only cowering in fear of the crowd of middle schoolers who surrounded the poor thing. Gaku stared down at it while everyone stared at him, their judgmental gaze shifting from classmate to creature and back again. He could sense their question in the air – it was practically a weight on his shoulders, whispering: _what is he going to do?_

Gaku stared at the spider a moment longer, before crouching down towards the ground. Fingers found his laces, untying them and shrugging off his shoe. Slowly, he approached the spider, trying to not startle it. One wrong move, and chaos would tear through the room.

He swung. In a second, the spider was dead.

The room around him broke into cheers, and arms hauled him off the ground and into the air. Students swarmed him as they applauded his courage, ignoring the corpse they were leaving behind.

However, the joy was only short-lived as the teacher stepped back into the classroom. Their crisp voice cut through the commotion.

"Could everyone put their lunch boxes away? Class will resume."

Once again, the drag of school resumed, and Gaku complied, reflecting on the spider once and a while – but by the next day, he didn't remember what he had done at all.

* * *

Yashiro Gaku was standing before a group of elementary schoolers years later. He boasted a class of excited and studious children, who were eager to learn and try new things. It took only a few conversations and glances to know who fell into the proper categories of outgoing and loved to neglected and quiet. To who would be noticed – and who wouldn't be missed.

But at the end of the day, he did enjoy teaching. He wanted to give his students the best, and worked hard to give them challenging assignments and test their knowledge. He gave motivational speeches to those who sought his guidance, and encouraged those with doubts clouding their ideals. He taught them how to solve their own problems, and face their fears.

And a particularly good opportunity had come up just that afternoon.

"There's a spider!" a girl shrieked. She shoved her chair away from the desk. The students around her screamed, darting away from the scene as the room descended into chaos. Yashiro turned around, dropping the chalk in his hand as he zeroed in on the problem.

"Where is it?"

The girl pointed to her desk with a shaking finger. Yashiro paced over, a strange sense of familiarity gnawing at him as he looked at the spider: small, meek, defenseless. Frozen in fear.

"Yashiro-sensei!" "Kill it, please!" "Can you smash it?"

The cries of the children were pressuring him to be judge, jury, and executioner, begging for him to rid of it – and for a moment, his fingers curled, wondering where he could retrieve a newspaper, a book.

But then he _saw_ the spider. He saw it chance two more steps before coming to another stop. He saw it trying to survive, wanting the world to ignore its very presence. He saw nothing wrong with what the spider was doing – only a wrong in how the students had treated the innocent creature.

"Misturugi, hand me the cup on your desk. Kazuaki, a paper."

The two children responded quickly, giving Yashiro the necessary tools. With a deft hand, he placed the cup over the spider and slid the paper under, trapping it.

"Children," he said, voice slow and practiced, "this is going to be an impromptu lesson about keeping bugs alive. Watch. Could one of you open the window?"

The latch was clicked open, the window pushed outward. Yashiro moved towards it, speaking all the while.

"Spiders don't always hurt us. But they have a bad reputation as being dangerous creatures due to the popularity of them in modern culture. We see evidence of the webs of they make and how they feed, and more deadly spiders do exist. This one, however, is docile. You don't have to kill every spider, but can capture and release them… like so."

The cup was placed onto the windowsill, and delicately lifted away. The spider, seeing an opening, scuttled out to the outdoors. As he shut the window, Yashiro felt the student's eyes upon him, processing the information. What was their reaction going to be – for saving the spider from a terrible end?

"…T-Thank you, sensei!" The girl who had started the entire commotion began to clap, and the other students quickly joined in. They smiled brightly, and praised him – calling him brave and a hero.

"Settle down, everyone," he said, feeling embarrassed at their comments. "It's not hard to forgive. Always save bugs if you can. Understood?"

"Understood, sensei!"

* * *

Nishizono Manabu knew that his new name would take getting used to, but that didn't concern him at all. He was used to changing names and masks, and this would be no different. And this name came with the benefits of a political career, affluent friends, and local fame. It came with a wife and a strict schedule – but he had enough sway over it that he could do his weekly visit to the hospital.

He had been at Satoru's side all this time, watching him grow. If he happened to meet Sachiko – a strong woman who had been determined to keep Satoru alive, believing that he would wake up – she would show him the photographs throughout the years. Each time, his friends would come back and celebrate his birthday, and Christmas too, presents filling up his bedroom back at the apartment. He could see the change in Satoru's features in those photographs, something unnoticed when one visited as frequently as himself.

He assumed that he had just missed Sachiko that afternoon. When he walked in, a CD player had been playing the familiar "Wonder Guy" theme song – Nishizono only knew it from hearing it so many times – a halfhearted attempt to wake the sleeping child through a familiar set of sounds.

 _Ah, but you're not quite a child anymore, are you?_ Satoru had grown too big for his beds, and the doctors would move him appropriately. He was an older teen now, and it would be a shock when he woke up, to have a child's brain in an adult's body.

 _But then again,_ Nishizono mused, _you were always too mature for your age, weren't you, Satoru?_

Settling down in the chair by his bed, he looked over the boy's sleeping features. He knew that like everyone else, he was waiting for Satoru to wake up. A small part of him hoped that each time he touched his hand, murmured a greeting, see him shift in the bed, would draw a conscious reaction from the hollow husk which had once fought so passionately to find a killer.

As he stared at Satoru, a small movement from the corner of the sheets caught his eye. Enough of a distraction, he glanced over at the source.

A small spider was creeping along the sheets. Believing to have gone unnoticed, they continued moving. A stain on the white sheets that moved onto Satoru's skin. When Satoru did not react, the spider continued moving, legs moving in perfect sync.

Before it could get any higher, Nishizono reached out and took the spider by a leg, pinching it tightly between his fingers. The other seven flailed helplessly as he suspended them in the air over the bed. Desperately looking for something to cling to in the empty space. Nishizono decided to humor the spider, taking one of the limbs between his other two fingers – and _pulling._

Admittedly, the leg came off too easily – a disappointment. He flicked it aside and took another, morbidly fascinated. Did the spider feel this intense pain the same way an amputated human did? Could it be worse? He had picked off two more legs as he wondered, trying to gauge a reaction from the arachnid who could tell him nothing.

Then, Satoru shifted. Nishizono paused his work, staring past the spider at Satoru. His eyes widened and his breath hitched, wondering. Waiting.

Satoru did not move again. The rush of hope that had flooded his veins dissipated in an instant. All was still except the spider, squirming and dancing, attempting to escape its gradual execution. He watched it a moment longer, before looking to Satoru's bedside.

A glass of water stood idly on the table, seemingly untouched. With a casual motion, Nishizono dropped the spider into the cup. It tried to escape, legs scrambling against the inevitable call of death.

Nishizono emptied the glass into the flower vase at Satoru's bedside before leaving.


End file.
